The idea of regeneration has clearly caught hold in the building and community development world. It’s starting to show up everywhere. But how can we tell whether a project is or will be regenerative? In embracing the term, are we in danger of demeaning its power if we don’t fully understand it? Is it just green building at its best—carbon neutrality; 100% renewable energy, all recycled materials? Or is it more, and if so what?
At Regenesis, we see it as not just “more”, but actually a different order of working, one that strives for a different order of effect. For example, a regenerative project, or community must, at minimum, manifest all four of these qualitative attributes. More
Let’s begin with a caveat. This will seem wrong to many of you. This is because it is not familiar and our brain prefers the familiar so it can conserve energy. Just remember this conservation is a threat to learning and discovery and particularly creativity and innovation. We have to manage our reactions to the new to open doors in the mind. There will be plenty of time and ways to test and validate if it is worth letting go of old molds and frameworks. But be willing to suspend certainty until you have experienced the different approach.
First, one begins with a Whole in mind and works from the whole, all the time. This may seem obvious, but it rarely happens. Lets remind ourselves how we know a whole. A whole is born (e.g. a person or animal) , formed by nature in her work (e.g. a canyon), or created by humans with an intention of being an enduring whole—e.g. a family. This contrasted with planning processes that work with functional aspects such as jobs or incomplete parts of a whole such as task forces . Additional examples here including working with a river, storm water or a city. These are not wholes. An example of a whole is a corporation, a watershed as demarcated by nature, a customer, or a valley. Puget Sound or Cascadia are wholes, not the State of Washington or the Province of British Columbia. More
Most people believe that sustaining the planet is a good idea, given the impacts that human civilization is having. Business has played a big role in creating those impacts, and has been playing a big role in trying to address them. The problem is that sustainability only looks at half of what needs to be taken into account when thinking about whole living systems. Sustainability primarily addresses reducing impacts and increasing efficiencies. Corporate sustainability programs are wrapped almost entirely around these goals.
But every experienced businessperson knows you can’t make a healthy business by only reducing inefficiencies. The experience of running a successful business teaches that it’s the ability of a business to generate value that is the real source of its vitality and viability. You can only make a healthy business by figuring out what you want to grow, how to grow it effectively, and then defining inefficiency as anything that doesn’t produce what you are trying to grow. What is true of business is also true of the planet. More
Via Pamela, here is an interesting post over at Lynda Gratton’s Future of Work blog about the power of community. Gratton points to three networks and communities that she believes we all as individuals will need to tap into and be sourced from in the future.
Gratton’s post reminds me of a frequent conversation that surfaces over here at Regenesis–namely, what it is that organizes or bounds a community. Virtual communities may organize themselves by an idea, a trend, or an exchange of services. In other words, virtual communties are driven and bounded by human forces. More
The observation of birds and natural bird migration patterns are absolutely essential for the survival of Native American healing, spirituality, and culture. Hunting, planting, and ceremony are often coordinated with the appearance of particular birds. Birds also remind storytellers that it is time to teach children about the lessons learned from the eagle, the hawk, the heron, the dove, and so on. A bird such as the eagle does not simply represent flying close to Creator or seeing from a higher perspective. Rather the eagle teaches and is this value and power. This is very different from the perspective of EuroAmerican culture in which birds and animals may symbolize human values. There are numerous examples of bird symbolism in the Bible. If Native Americans only valued birds for their symbolic value, then they might be satisfied to read or think about them or view them in an aviary. But they are not, because birds must be observed in their natural state in order to learn directly from them.
Bird behavior plays a central role in the origin/creation stories of many tribes. The raven is linked with the sun among the Tlingit of Alaska. The eagle teaches early humans how to survive among tribes as diverse as the Hopi and the Ojibwe. The Innu, an Algonquian people closely related to the Mikmaq, Passamaquody, and Cree, revere the Canadian goose because, in their creation story, he/she helped bring the warmth of the South. Geese migrating south to north mean that the snows are melting and it is time to hunt again. When they return south, it is time to store goods for winter. And at the end of a prayer, or in closing a ceremony, instead of “Amen,” Innu will sometimes exclaim “Ho ho ho Eshqua.” Eshqua is Innu for the goose.
The presence of birds is essential for the protection of nature’s diversity. The great Mohawk elder Ray Fadden lamented the loss of songbirds in New York forests. No more spreading of seeds to nurture the once rich undergrowth, healthy trees, and the insects and animals that depend on them. Mr. Fadden told me that even the bear were ill as a result: far less plants to eat, fewer roots to dig. The bear, ancestor of one of the three Mohawk clans (turtle, bear, wolf) and first teacher of herbal medicine, is threatened by the loss of birds.
Value-adding has gotten a bad rap. Mostly because we are used to hearing the term “value-added,” which has come to mean a financial reward for our step of the chain on the way to consumers.
I spoke in Beirut in November to the ministers of energy, environment and other arenas, plus 120 CEOs of corporations in related industries. The video is above. Value-adding is the subject of the talk. Value-adding means to change positively the lives of the stakeholders every time you engage them. The ‘ing” is indicative of a never-ended commitment to increase the value to the system of stakeholders.
More than half a century ago Aldo Leopold wrote of learning to think like a mountain. He claimed that this was essential to behaving ecologically. But how does a mountain think? Leopold provides one significant clue. He relates the story of seeing the dying “green fire” in the eyes of a wolf mother he shot. He tells us that a mountain must live in fear of its deer herd, for without predators the deer will eat her bare and the rains will strip her of soil.
Let’s follow Leopold’s trail and see where it takes us. His wolf story reminds me of another my friend tells about Yellowstone National Park: when wolves were reintroduced, they lowered the temperature of the water in many of the streams and rivers. How could this be? More
I sit and listen to the speakers at the Energy conference in Beirut, Lebanon present their papers and reports. One after another they describe what it will take to become a low carbon society. I wonder, do they really not understand that carbon is the basis of all life? A low carbon world is one where little or no life is happening! “Low carbon society” points to the biggest problem we have with reversing global warming, and creating healthy watersheds, cities and even our planet: not the carbon itself, but our way of thinking about it.
If we stood in the shoes of Life, we would hear her call us to increase our connection to the natural cycling of carbon as it regenerates life again and again. Life isn’t looking for carbon neutrality or carbon negative solutions. She wants carbon active, carbon engaged in life-generating processes. She wants us to be educated about carbon and how it works. She wants us as partners in the cycling processes that engage carbon with water and oxygen—molecules in motion that evolve the expression of a living planet. She wants us carbon positive, doing positive things with carbon. More
For human beings, places are meaningful and meaning creating. According to urban planner Timothy Beatley, “Meaningful places are essential for meaningful lives.” Without a sense of place we would live within undifferentiated and thereby meaningless space. Cultural Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan wrote, “Space is transformed into place as it acquires definition and meaning.” Our sense of home, of homeland, of our place and role in the world, all help to give us a sense of rootedness and identity in the world. They help to nurture us and provide us a safe haven when we are in need of it. When we have a sense of place in the world, we know where we come from and where we are going. As such, we feel “in-place” in the world.
Sense of place is an embodied experience, not an abstract concept. Our home and the street we live on may feel meaningful and alive because we have an intimate relationship and experience with it. More
While we are hearing more and more about regenerative design, less attention has been paid to how community planning must shift. Traditionally, community planning efforts have been organized around managing different societal functions—job creation, transportation, housing, habitat protection, etc. as a way of creating economic development, environmental protection or community revitalization. They have largely been conducted as if these facets of life were unrelated to each other. Where more than one facet has been considered, the goals that were not the primary driver have normally been treated as background constraints, e.g., to advance economic development with minimum harm to the environment. The push to create “sustainable cities” has added goals around carbon emissions and energy efficiency without changing this pattern–a pattern that presents serious barriers to community sustainability, let alone regeneration. More
While we are hearing more and more about regenerative design, less attention has been paid to how community planning must shift. Traditionally, community planning efforts have been organized around managing different societal functions—job creation, transportation, housing, habitat protection, etc. as a way of creating economic development, environmental protection or community revitalization. They have largely been conducted as if these facets of life were unrelated to each other. Where more than one facet has been considered, the goals that were not the primary driver have normally been treated as background constraints, e.g., to advance economic development with minimum harm to the environment. The push to create “sustainable cities” has added goals around carbon emissions and energy efficiency without changing this pattern–a pattern that presents serious barriers to community sustainability, let alone regeneration.